Fresh produce from Fresh Harvest, a co-op of local farms that lets you select your week's bounty of fruits, vegetables and more. / Adrien Good

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Adrien Good

www.foodisagoodthing.com

About

Adrien Good lives in Nashville and enjoys exploring food and sharing her discoveries, while striving to live and eat as sustainably as possible. She can be contacted at foodisagoodthing@gmail.com. She blogs at Foodisagoodthing.com and can be followed on twitter at @foodisagoodthng.

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Nashville is blessed with many great farmers markets during the spring and summer, giving residents a chance to experience the local produce of the season. Many of the farms that participate in these farmers markets offer CSA subscriptions to sample their goods.

The concept of the CSA, or community supported agriculture, is that you invest upfront in the farm and you receive the bounty of the crop as the season progresses. Many farms offer half or full shares, and most work out to be about $20 to $30 per box, weekly or bi-weekly.

We have tried several vegetable CSA shares in the past and always been very happy with how itís gone. It is a fantastic way to increase your intake of fresh vegetables and also sample items you may not usually purchase. However, the problem most people find with CSAs is that it is just a lot of food to handle, especially if you are single or travel frequently.

Fresh Harvest is a great alternative to that.

Fresh Harvest is a co-op started by two local farms, Drury Family Farm and Turnbull Creek Organic Farm. They joined forces to offer a subscription-based alternative to CSAs and farmers markets. Both of these farms, in addition to a handful of other farms that participate in the co-op, sell all Certified Organic or Certified Naturally Grown produce, meaning that while not all of the farms may go through the strict regulatory standards to be certified as organic, it is still grown in the same manner.

Not only do these farms offer a wide array of seasonal fruits and vegetables, but they also offer beautiful flowers.

Every Sunday evening, subscribers to the co-opís email list are sent a link to that weekís market. A quick visit to the website and you will find all of the veggies, fruit and flowers that will be ready for harvest that week. Place an order online, and pick up your bounty on Wednesday afternoons.

Orders arenít just limited to the harvest that these farms have to offer, either. They have teamed up with other local artisans to bring you meat from Bear Creek and Wedge Oak farms, cheese from the Bloomy Rind, bread from Twin Forks, coffee from Bongo Java and sweets from Dozen Bakery. It takes all the pit stops you could make at a Saturday morning farmers market and puts them at your digital fingertips.

For those of you who canít always make a trip to the farmers markets, or are looking for an alternative to the CSA where you get a little more say in the matter, I highly recommend you check out Fresh Harvest. To sign up for their email list, visit http://freshharvest.locallygrown.net.